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On September 1, 1923, about 40,000 people fled from the fires into the empty grounds of the former Army Clothing Depot (Hifukushō-ato) in Honjo, Tokyo, because the open space looked like safety. They packed in shoulder to shoulder with carts, bedding and household goods. A fire whirlwind swept across the site that afternoon, the belongings caught fire all at once, and roughly 38,000 people died there in a single place within hours.
After the quake, rumors spread that Koreans were poisoning wells and setting fires. They became lethal when police and the Home Ministry repeated them in official communications and martial-law measures, because that gave the rumors state credibility. Armed neighborhood vigilante groups (jikeidan) then stopped passersby at checkpoints and tested them with shibboleth words. They killed thousands of Koreans, along with Chinese and some Japanese mistaken for Koreans. Communication blackout, fear and official endorsement together turned prejudice into systematic killing.
Years before 1923, the seismologist Imamura Akitsune warned that a great earthquake could strike Tokyo and that fire would cause massive casualties. His senior colleague Ōmori Fusakichi publicly rejected the prediction as unscientific, largely to calm public alarm. Imamura was mocked for it. When the Kantō earthquake came, the fire death toll he had described came true, and the effort to suppress panic had instead suppressed preparation.